Tuesday, 28 February 2017

National Science Day

National Science(विज्ञान) Day

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, a world renowned(प्रसिद्ध) Physicist, on February 28, 1928, made a path-breaking discovery which later was named as the Raman effect. In order to push science as an important subject and to develop the passion towards it among the Indian youth, India celebrates the National Science day on February 28 every year. He was awarded the knighthood in the year 1929 and for his amazing discovery, won the Nobel Prize in 1930. It was the first time that an Indian won the prize, even the first Asian. Lord Rayleigh, a scientist from England, had once discoverd that the colour of the sky is blue as the sunlight is scattered by molecules of air and small particles in the atmosphere. It is blue because it has a short wavelength hence get scattered the most. Similarly, scientists believed that the colour of the seas are blue because they reflect the sky, but Raman proved other wise. He found out that even the sea scatters(फैलाना) the light. This lead to his studies and theory, which later came to be known as the Raman effect.

CV Raman was born in Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu in the year 1888. He was very young when he completed his college and went on to join the Indian Civil Service, even though his interests laid in science, especially in the field of sound and light. The vibrations of sound and light interested him and he went on to do his research in these areas at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science. His work made him famous in the prestigious circles after his work started getting published in famous journals. In 1917, when he was 27, he was offered professorship of physics at Calcutta University and he was back to his first love- science. Raman had started a systematic study of scattering of light by different substances, an investigation that led to the discovery of what came to be called the Raman Effect. The Raman Effect is of high importance in studying the molecular structures, and its discovery got Raman the 1930 Nobel Prize for physics. His efforts showed the world that India could produce top class scientists, and put our country right on the scientific map.